The Homecoming Queen Gets Her Man

by Shirley Jump

  On any other day, he would have enjoyed the obvious flirtation. Maybe even traded a few innuendos with Corinna, who had never made a secret of her interest in him. Instead, he found himself wondering about Meri, sitting in the uncomfortable chair in the waiting room. Not just wondering about what her cleavage looked like—hell, he wasn’t dead, after all—but what he had seen in her eyes earlier today when she’d seen the vulnerable, determined fawn.

  And why he still cared.

  He, of everyone in the world, should stay far, far away from Meri Prescott. Not just because he had already learned his lesson about tangling with a woman who lived in that world of debutantes and beauty pageants, of hair spray and high heels. Once upon a time, that hadn’t bothered him. Then he’d gone to war and become a different man. Not a better man, some would argue.

  And then there was Eli. Just those three letters sent a sharp pain searing through his chest.

  “You okay?” Corinna asked.

  He jerked his attention back. “Uh, yeah. The stethoscope was a little cold.”

  “Oh, don’t tell me you can’t take a little cold, a big, strong man like yourself.” She gave him a playful swat. “Or, I can warm it up against my own skin first. If you’d like.”

  Before she could do that—and Jack really didn’t want to know where the stethoscope was going to get warmed—the door opened and Doc Malloy came in. Corinna stepped back, fumbling with the blood pressure cuff.

  “Why, hello, Jack,” the doctor said. “Haven’t seen you in a long time.”

  Jack leaned forward and shook hands with the elderly doctor. He’d known Doc Malloy all his life, and except for a few more pounds around his gut and a few more white hairs on top of his head, the doctor looked about the same as he had when he’d given Jack his first vaccination shots. He was an amiable doctor, one often given to long chats with patients he knew well. Doc had fought in Vietnam, and had traded a few war stories with Jack over the years. “Nice to see you again, sir.”

  Doc Malloy nodded at Jack’s bandaged hand. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  “Just a little flesh wound. Meri thought—”

  “Meri Prescott? She’s back in town?”

  Jack nodded. God, he hoped they didn’t get into a lengthy conversation about Meri. He didn’t want to think about her any more than was necessary, and over the last day, that had been like every five seconds. “She thought I needed stitches.”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in thirty years of marriage, it’s that the woman is always right.” Doc Malloy grinned. “And even when you think she’s wrong, you agree anyway. Happy wife makes for a happy life.”

  “Uh, Meri and I aren’t...she isn’t...” What was with him? Since when did he stumble and stutter? “She’s just visiting her grandpa.”

  Across the room, Corinna’s face broke into a smile. She fiddled with the chart, but kept a pair of coquettish eyes on Jack’s face.

  Doc Malloy bent to study Jack’s injury. In the end, he decided a few stitches were called for, after all. Corinna stayed by the doc’s side, handing him supplies, but keeping her attention on Jack. She’d flash him a smile from time to time, when she wasn’t contorting herself to give him a direct view of her best assets. Once Jack’s hand was bandaged, Corrina ducked out, with a little sashay, to refill the supplies.

  “There you go, good as new,” Doc Malloy said.

  It was almost the same thing Meri had said earlier. Did people really think a bandage or two would change anything about Jack?

  “I’ve been so battered and bruised in the last year, Doc, I’ll never be good as new.” It wasn’t just what had happened to Jack on the outside—those scars had healed, faded to almost nothing—it was the burdens he carried inside his heart, the guilt that weighed down his every step, like an elephant hanging off his heel.

  Jack was the one who could sit out on his back porch and look across beautiful Stone Gap Lake, soaking up the warmth of the sun, breathing in the fresh, clean air. Eli never would again. Would never know those joys or moments of peace. Because of Jack’s decisions, Jack’s choices, Jack’s mistakes.

  Doc Malloy laid a hand on Jack’s arm and met his gaze. “You know how they temper steel? They take it to its limit over and over again, then let it cool, until it becomes so hardened and strong there’s almost nothing that can break it or change it. That’s how people get tempered, too. They get broken, they go through tragedies, triumphs, pain, loss, new lives being born and others lost to death.” The kindly doctor’s eyes met Jack’s with a knowledge that came from years of continuity. Doc had given Jack his kindergarten polio vaccine and his last checkup before he shipped off to boot camp. Doc’s blue eyes were eyes that knew Jack, knew him as much more than another file in the cabinet. “The hells people go through make them stronger in the end, stronger than steel.”

  Jack lifted his newly bandaged hand and cradled it in the opposite palm. There was no bandage to fix what was wrong with Jack inside his soul. “Sometimes the tests go too far, the heat too great, and they break.”

  “The people? Or the steel?”

  “Doesn’t matter, Doc. Does it?” Jack slipped off the table and headed for the door. “Thanks again for fixing me up.”

  “I only fix the outside problems, Jack. A man’s gotta fix the inside ones on his own.”

  Jack just nodded to that and headed out to the waiting room.

  Meri was reading a magazine when Jack entered the room, her blond head bent over the glossy pages. The sun streamed in through the window behind her. Like a halo, he’d say, if he was a sentimental guy.

  She looked up and a smile curved across her face, and something caught in his chest, something that fluttered like hope, that made him feel like the kid he used to be a long time ago. Then the smile was gone and she was all business, putting the magazine to the side and fishing her keys out of her purse. “All set?”

  “Yup.” He paid the bill, then the two of them walked back into the bright sunshine. Meri unlocked the truck and climbed in the driver’s seat, waiting for him to get in on the other side. Without a word, she put the truck in gear and traveled the mile to the hardware store. Jack glanced over at her, but she kept her gaze on the road. He told himself he was glad.

  The air between them chilled, and the silence thickened the air in the truck. When he unconsciously reached for the door handle with his right hand, he winced when the newly bandaged injury let out a protest.

  “You okay?” Meri asked. “Sugar?”

  “Is that jealousy I hear in your voice?”

  “I’m not jealous of anyone. And especially not of that plastic enhanced former cheerleader.”

  He arched a brow. “Are you sure about that? Because it sounds like you might want to go back in there and stick her stethoscope in a painful place.”

  Meri waved toward the hardware store. “Why don’t you go get what you need, and I’ll hit the grocery store. Kill two birds with one stone.”

  On any other day, Jack would have welcomed the opportunity to be alone, puttering around among tools and nuts and bolts. But instead, he found himself raising the bandaged hand and giving Meri a pity-me smile. “I’m, uh, not so sure I should be lifting tools and plywood with this. I could open the stitches up. That could lead to an infection. Gangrene. Amputation.”

  She shook her head and laughed. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a drama queen?”

  “I’m just trying to head off further injuries.” He worked up the pity-me smile again. “If you suffer through the hardware store with me, I promise not to complain when we’re picking out cereal at the Sav-a-Lot.”

  She shifted in the seat and narrowed her gaze. “Your hand hurts that much?”

  “Oh, it was a really deep cut. Doc Malloy said I almost severed a nerve.” Okay, so he hadn’t said any such thing, but Ja
ck figured telling a white lie to garner a little sympathy from Meri wasn’t a bad thing.

  “Okay. But only if you promise one thing.” She wagged a finger at his chest. “You won’t spend an hour in the power tool section, drooling like a five-year-old in the candy aisle.”

  He caught her finger with his good hand. “I promise not to spend an hour in the power tool section. But I don’t promise not to drool.”

  At least over the tools. Right now, with her hair loose around her shoulders and those faded denim shorts hugging her thighs, he couldn’t promise not to drool over Meri. Seemed his hormones kept forgetting his brain’s resolve to stay far, far away from her.

  “It’s a good thing Nurse Sugar made sure you had plenty of bandages on your hand, should you need to wipe your chin.” Meri slid her finger out of his grasp, then stepped out of the truck and marched into the hardware store before he could even open his door.

  Jack chuckled. Seemed Corinna’s flirting had lit a fire under his old flame. For a second he wanted to explore that spark, see where it led. To touch more than a single digit on Meri’s hand, to explore more than just the look in her eyes.

  The glass door shut behind Meri’s curvy hips, and Jack’s reflection shimmered before him. He had a day’s worth of stubble on his chin, a tear in the neck of the faded T-shirt he was wearing, and a hole in the knee of his jeans. But like Doc Malloy had said, those outside imperfections were temporal, a mask for the damages underneath.

  He closed his eyes for a second, and in his mind he was back on the battlefield, surrounded by dust and diesel fumes and frustration. He could hear the rumble of the engines, the whoop-whoop-whoop of the helicopters above them, and the frightened cries of the wounded. And he saw himself, standing there for a moment, just like he was now, his reflection shimmering in the panel of the Humvee, its back half still sitting as pristine as if it had just been driven off some car lot, while the front driver’s side was gone, erased with a blast.

  “Jack?”

  His mind was caught in a tumbling wave, spiraling backward, drowning, dark, as if he couldn’t find the surface.

  “Jack?”

  Then a soft touch on his arm. He jumped, adrenaline shooting through his veins, then his mind caught up with his eyes and his heartbeat slowed, one beat at a time. “Sorry. I was...daydreaming.”

  More like having a waking nightmare, but Jack didn’t want to talk about that. Not with Meri, not with Doc Malloy, not with anyone.

  “Are you okay? You look a little pale.”

  “I’m fine,” he barked. “Now let me get what I need here so I can get back to work. I don’t have all day to stand around and jabber.” He brushed past her and into the store, knowing he was being an ass and not caring. Because caring would mean explaining, and he sure as hell wasn’t doing that.

  She lingered at the back of the store while he grabbed a cart and filled it with the supplies he needed. By the time he reached the checkout counter, guilt weighed on his shoulders. None of this was Meri’s fault. Taking it out on her, simply because she reminded him of his mistakes, was wrong.

  Jack shoved the change in his pocket, then wheeled the cart over to Meri. “Sorry for biting your head off.”

  “Thank you for apologizing.” A smile curved across her face, easing from appreciation to a tease. “But don’t think I won’t make you pay for that.”

  The way she looked at him, with that light in her eyes, pushed away the dusty, desolate world of Afghanistan. The weight in his chest eased slightly and for a moment, he was an ordinary man out with an ordinary woman.

  He arched a brow. “Pay? How?”

  A twinkle danced in her eyes and made something in his stomach flip. “I’m gonna take a very, very long time deciding between Froot Loops and Apple Jacks.”

  The tension from earlier slid away like water running down Jack’s back. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt like this, as if the only thing he had to worry about was how long it took to buy groceries. Maybe Meri returning to town wasn’t such a bad thing, after all. “You say that like it’s an actual choice.”

  “It is.” She lowered her nose and gave him a piercing stare. “I take my cereal very, very seriously, Jack Barlow.”

  Damn, he liked the way she said his name. “Anyone who takes their cereal seriously knows that Froot Loops are better than Apple Jacks.”

  “Oh, yeah? You want to put a wager on that, Mr. Barlow?”

  “First off,” he said, taking a step closer to her, until mere inches separated them, until he could catch the dark floral notes of her perfume and see the gold flecks in her green eyes, “since when do you call me Mr. Barlow?”

  She opened her mouth to speak. The tease had disappeared from her eyes, replaced by something he couldn’t read. “Since we haven’t been familiar in a long time.”

  “I’d say we’re pretty familiar right now.” Given how close they were, given how much he wanted to kiss her. “We are, after all, discussing breakfast. That’s something I usually don’t do until after the third date. So what do you say? Want to have a bowl of Fruit Loops with me? We’ll settle this debate once and for all.”

  Was he really asking her to choose the best cereal? Or for something more?

  She put a hand on his chest, a flutter of a touch that made his heart stutter, then turned on her heel. “Discussing breakfast and having it together are two very, very different things, Mr. Barlow.”

  * * *

  For a little while, Meri had forgotten the scar on her face. For some reason, whenever she was with Jack, it was as if that scar didn’t exist. Maybe because he never stared at it as if the crescent shape was a blinking red light. Maybe it was because seeing Jack made her feel as if she was sixteen again, way before she’d left Stone Gap. Way before she’d found a new life in New York, and way before the moment that had changed her in fundamental ways.

  Then Meri walked into the Sav-a-Lot and in five seconds, a reminder came rushing over in the form of Esther Klein.

  “Oh, my goodness, Meri Prescott! You’re back in town.” The grocery store owner had her arms outstretched to welcome Meri with a hug. She corralled Meri against her ample chest, then pushed her back. “Lord Almighty, girl, what happened to you? Were you in an accident?”

  “No. I’m fine. It’s just a scar from a cut, nothing big.” There was no way she wanted to get into the details of what had happened. Given the way gossip spread in Stone Gap, the story would explode like a wildfire by the end of the day.

  “But it’s...you were so beautiful...” Esther flushed. “I mean, you still are beautiful, of course, but—”

  “We better get those groceries,” Jack said. He’d grabbed a cart from the corral at the front of the store and handed it off to her. “Your grandpa is waiting on us.”

  “So nice to see you again, Mrs. Klein,” Meri said, then headed down the aisle with Jack before Esther could finish what came after the but. Meri had heard it all before. But now you’re so different. But now your face is forever changed. But now no one here will ever see you the same as they did before.

  All her life, Meri had thought she wasn’t vain, that she didn’t give a damn what anyone thought about her looks. But when she saw that mixture of horror and pity in Esther’s eyes—and so many like her—Meri realized she was lying to herself. She did care. The identity she had despised—the beauty queen—was forever altered, and that made Meri wonder what identity the scar raised. The scared woman who couldn’t face the city or her camera again? Or a woman who had survived, and would persevere again? Or would that scar win in the end?

  Her hand went to her cheek. She hooked a hank of her hair and brought it forward over her cheek to cover the scar.

  Jack stopped the cart. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t cover that up just because some br
ain-dead woman made a senseless comment.” He reached over and brushed her hair behind her ear again. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

  Meri shook her head. “I’m not who I used to be, and people in this town are never going to get past that.”

  “Well, then, they’re just ignorant. Don’t they realize you’re too damned smart to be prancing down a runway in a tiara?”

  She laughed. “Gee, thanks.”

  “It’s true. You’re too smart to be just a beauty queen and too beautiful to let the pettiness of someone who should know better than to run their mouth bother you.”

  Jack calling her beautiful touched her more than she realized. Even with the scar, even with a few more years behind her? Or was he just being polite? She cocked a grin at him. “Are you complimenting me, Jack Barlow?”

  “Hell, no. Gentlemen compliment women, and I am no gentleman.” He gave his head a mock toss, which made her laugh, and then he gestured toward their empty cart. “Now let’s get this grocery store torture over with.”

  “Thank you.”

  He shrugged. “No need to thank me. I know what it’s like to have people asking a lot of nosy questions.”

  She wanted to ask what he meant. Was it the war? The loss of Eli? The difficulty in coming back to Stone Gap? But then she realized she would be doing the very thing they both hated—asking a lot of nosy questions. So instead, she headed the cart down the bread aisle. To, as Jack had said, get this grocery torture over with.

  The store was relatively empty, caught in that midday window of too late for the lunch-hour shopping trips and too early for the after-school dinner rush. Meri reached for a loaf of wheat bread and dropped it into the top basket of the cart.

  “If that’s for Ray, he’s not going to eat it. He claims he’s allergic to fiber.”

  Meri raised a doubting brow. “Allergic to fiber?”